Shadows in the Sunlight
by LittleGreenBudgie
Summary: Isadora didn't seem so terribly burdened by her fierce loyalties, her strong sense of morality. If anything, her knightly code seemed to push her to greater things and to provide stability in terrible times. At the very least, that sentimentality of hers had saved Legault's life that day.


Only a shift in the wind saved Legault's life. It brought the sound of wingbeats to his ears a second soon enough for him to jump to the side as a wyvern's talons bit into the earth, missing him by a hair's breadth. He spun, daggers flipping into his hands. The wyrm snarled and tried to take a bite at him—he retaliated by slashing at the beast's face, giving it a bloody nose but little else. With a curse, Legault bolted towards the woods, hoping that the close-packed Bernese pine trees could bring him some cover.

At fifty feet to the woods, Legault could hear the wyvern launching back into the air, ready to continue its pursuit of him. At thirty feet, a javelin whizzed past him, ruffling his hair with its passing. He didn't dare chance a look over his shoulder, although he knew the wyvern and its rider were hot on his trail. At ten feet, he could hear the rider urging on her mount, eager to catch him.

He broke through a line of bushes and into the forest. With a sigh of relief, Legault dropped to the ground under a tall spruce tree. He saw the wyvern peel off, unable to fly between the branches. With luck, the rider had decided he wasn't worth her time. Legault might have gotten pine needles tangled in his hair and scrapes across his bare arms, but it was better than ending up as wyvern chow. He counted out one breath, two, but then branches snapped under the weight of the wyrm as its rider brought it to ground.

"My, this isn't looking good," he murmured to himself, sliding around the backside of the tree trunk. He stayed still as a figurine.

At the sound of the wyvern sniffing the air, he cursed. Wyverns didn't have the best sense of smell, but it was still more than sufficient for tracking him down. He started slinking away, walking heel-to-toe, his footfalls nearly silent on the ground. The wyrm's huge scaled bulk knocked aside bushes and branches as if they were little more than cobwebs, though, and Legault couldn't outrun it.

He put his back to a tree, tightened his grip on his knives, and waited for the attack.

Legault wasn't disappointed; the wyvern crashed through the brush and lunged, its mean golden eyes fixed intently on him. Legault dropped into a roll as the beast snapped at the air. He came up beneath it, bringing up both knives and slicing into the wyvern's belly. It thrashed in pain and pulled back with a snarl. It was a good hit, but not the fatal one Legault had hoped for, and he would pay for missing the kill.

The monster's rider thrust her spear with enough force to shake his arm when he parried. As Legault brought his legs under him to jump back, the wyvern's tail whipped around and struck him. He hit the ground hard.

_They've changed their tactics in recent years,_ he thought to himself as he tried to scramble to his feet. _You damned fool. This is how you get yourself killed._

The beast pinned him beneath one claw, raking his side. Legault sunk his dagger into its foot, but the wyvern didn't recoil; its fanged jaws hung over him, poised to strike.

The sound of hooves striking the ground provided a moment's warning before a knight rushed into the clearing. Her sword bit into the wyvern's neck. It screeched in pain and pulled back, giving Legault the chance to clamber to his feet. The knight struck again, and again, until the beast and rider collapsed to the forest floor.

"Master Legault, are you okay?"

He panted for breath, looking up at his rescuer. A white-armored woman on a buckskin horse stared worriedly back at him.

"Ah, Dame Isadora. I'm doing just fine now, thank you," he replied. His heart still pumped too quickly in his chest, and his side stung from where the wyvern's claws had caught him, but he put on his best grin.

Isadora smiled back and extended a hand to him. Legault bowed before scrambling up behind her. He took perhaps a little too much pleasure in slipping his arms around Isadora's waist, but she didn't say anything about it. She put her heels to her mount's sides and urged it into a canter, pulling both of them away from the dead wyvern.

"What were you doing so far from the rest of the group?" she asked.

"Reconnaissance," he answered. "Thick fog like this necessitates skills like mine, don't you think?"

"Dangerous enemies like this say otherwise," Isadora replied, but it wasn't a reprimand. Her genuine concern always surprised him. Two years ago, Legault would have laughed at anyone who said that a lily-pure Pheraen knight would care about the life of an assassin like him, but then, two years ago, he didn't know Isadora. She questioned everything and always found some way to preoccupy herself: with old memories, with Eliminian scripture, with foreign wildlife. Sometime in the weeks since she'd joined their little army, she'd made him her new hobby, asking about the Reed brothers, the Black Fang, the tactics of killers. Legault somehow found the time to answer her questions, no matter how busy he was. She always brought a smile to his face.

"Then it's a good thing I've got a knight watching my back. With you hanging around like my very own guardian angel, I'd say I'm rather safe."

"Master Legault!" she exclaimed, a hint of embarrassment in her words. He liked how easy it was to get a reaction out of her—Isadora could never manage to keep any emotion off of her face or out of her voice. It was refreshing after the tangled mess of lies and deceit the Black Fang had become when Nergal showed up.

"I joke, of course. Still, it's nice to know that a guy like me isn't going to get chewed up without someone watching out for me. In the Fang, I would've been out on my own, and it would've been good-bye Hurricane if I'd been caught in a situation like that."

They rode back toward the front lines, Isadora's blade slashing left-right and cutting down the soldiers that tried to stop them. Her swordplay was a marvel to watch, and she didn't delegate an ounce of the fighting to Legault. Her horse's charge forced footmen to scramble out of the way, and the animal navigated the uneven Bernese terrain with the same grace as its master. Isadora brought her mount to a walk as they came up alongside Hector, his bear-sized battle axe held easily in one hand.

"Isadora? Weren't you supposed to be on the western flank?" Hector asked.

"Yes, Lord Hector. I was fighting out there when I saw a wyvern knight set down in the woods, and I moved to intercept it. It's a good thing I did, since they had nearly killed Master Legault by the time I got there. I apologize if I caused you concern," she explained. Legault slid off the back of her horse, dropping to the ground.

"They have a small contingent of wyvern riders hanging back across the river, with a few magic-users holed up in the hills with them. I think they're hoping to lure us into an ambush," he said.

"Blast! Tell Mark before we send anyone else over there!" Hector ordered. Legault cheerily saluted and jogged back towards the rear of the army.

The battle wrapped up less than an hour later with the enemies soundly routed. While a few of their soldiers had to go to the medical tent for their injuries, everyone had made it out alive, and that was more than could be said of their opponents. After getting his wounds bandaged up, Legault settled down in his tent for the night. His hands absently worked at a block of wood as he thought. His knife had carved out the rough form of a wolf, but he still needed to put in the details, the shaggy fur and the solemn eyes. He would keep it alongside the other sculptures like it. A hawk. A dog. A crow. He hadn't been able to bury his companions, but he could keep memorial in his own way.

His tent flap rustled, and he looked up to see Isadora poking her head in.

"Do you mind if I come in for a minute?" she hesitantly asked.

"Not a bit. I would say sit where you like, but there's not really many options," he replied, gesturing at the ground beside him. She curtsied and took the seat.

"Thank you. I...I was worried, earlier today. I thought for a moment that I'd been too late," Isadora said.

"Don't worry about it-I've been in worse scrapes before. Your face was a sight for sore eyes, though."

"I was wondering something. You lived with the Black Fang, right? You knew all that went on?"

"Not exactly. I knew the old Black Fang, but since Nergal showed up? I can't say I know too much, no," Legault replied.

He wasn't surprised that she'd started up her questions about the Fang again—it was her favorite topic—but she hadn't ever come to his tent to talk. Usually, they chatted while they ate meals together or sat around the camp. Legault wondered for a moment if he should joke about the impropriety of a well-bred woman like her visiting his tent at night, but he decided to let it slide. There was no point in embarrassing her, for all that he loved the look of her cheeks turning nearly red enough to match her rouge.

"A little while back, the Black Fang ambushed a contingent of Pheraen knights, including Lord Elbert. This I know. I know that Lord Elbert was later slain by Nergal, but...I don't know the fate of any of the others."

"Friends of yours? I wish I had good news, but the Angel of Death himself led that fight. I'm sorry to say that I didn't hear of anyone making it."

"I didn't think so," Isadora said quietly. "I want to have hope, to be strong, but...I find it harder with each passing day."

Tears threatened to break free from her eyes, and she hurriedly looked away from him, too proud to show weakness.

"Harken...My fiancé, Harken...He was one of Lord Elbert's guards. He disappeared with the others. I want to believe he survived, somehow, but..."

Her voice cracked, and she cut herself off. Legault put his arm around her shoulders, giving her a squeeze of reassurance. He felt awful, laying his hands on a woman whose fiancé had died by his compatriots' swords, but he couldn't well sit back and watch Isadora tear herself apart in front of him.

She leaned against him with a ragged sigh. Legault could feel her faintly shaking, feel her chest rising and falling arhythmically as she fought back tears. It struck him that she was vulnerable right then, and that if he played his cards right, she would likely fall for his charms, as so many men and women had before.

Legault shoved the urge aside. Not her. Not Isadora.

"I wasn't there, you know," he soothed. "Perhaps he did survive. If he's half the knight you are, I wager he had the skills to."

He didn't believe his own words, but Isadora didn't question them.

"Thank you. You're a good man, Master Legault."

If she knew half of what he'd done in his earlier years, she would never have said that. Thief, killer, con man...If there was a crime he hadn't committed, he couldn't think of it. Isadora knew that he had been an assassin, but she knew it in a vague, conceptual way that was too easily forgotten. She didn't know that he had murdered his old lover, Aesha, on the orders of a stranger. She didn't know how he'd slit Aesha's throat as she slept beside him, how he'd held her as she bled out, how he couldn't manage a single tear.

Legault put on his best grin, though, and nodded.

"And you're a good woman, Dame Isadora. If I were your man, I would do everything in my power to make my way back to you. I doubt your Harken would do anything less."

Those tears finally broke out of the corners of her eyes, and they tore wet lines down her cheeks.

"He wouldn't. He would come right back to me if he could. Nothing could stop him from coming back to me," she sobbed.

For once in his life, Legault didn't know what to say. He didn't think for a second that Harken was still alive, but he didn't know what else to tell Isadora, especially not when she seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

So instead of offering tired platitudes, he said, "That's it, then. Whatever the truth is, we can't know right now. Whatever you believe is true will have to suffice."

She looked up at him, brows furrowed.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that either he's dead or he's not, but you don't know. You can't keep sitting on the fence forever. It's killing you. So if you can't get a definite answer, and you don't know when or if you ever will, you've got to make up your own mind. No one else is going to decide for you," he said.

Isadora nodded slowly, but she didn't reply. She just stared off into the distance, like she could see the rushing rivers and snowy crags of northern Bern instead of the patched-up fabric of his tent. He sat silently, choosing not to weigh in. If it were him, he would cut his losses. No point pining over a lover who had either died or abandoned him. He would let it roll off him, letting go of his worry like a dandelion letting go of its seeds, and move on. That was why he had been the Black Fang's cleaner.

Still, looking at Isadora's proud face drawn up in thought, he wondered if that attitude weren't a little outdated. She didn't seem so terribly burdened by her fierce loyalties, her strong sense of morality. If anything, her knightly code seemed to provide stability in terrible times and to push her to greater things. At the very least, that sentimentality of hers had saved his life that day.

"I'll have to think about this more," Isadora finally said, shaking her head. She ineffectually rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, only succeeding in smudging her make-up further.

Legault offered her the edge of his cloak, and she took it. It used to be a thing of beauty, made of finespun wool and dyed a rich nobles' purple, but years on the job had stained and torn it. Isadora didn't seem to mind its raggedness, though, and she wiped her eyes with the corner.

"There you go. You're looking much better," he told her. "Say, can you make sure to remember something for me?"

She looked at him with a puzzled expression on her face.

"What is it?"

"Whatever you do decide, don't stay too hung up on it, okay? Whether it's guilt or regret, it's going to weigh on you if you let it. So don't. Just think about the good things in your life," Legault said. He smiled at her, and to his satisfaction, she smiled back.

"Thank you," she murmured. "I cannot say that I've gained any peace from our talk, but...thank you for your advice, Master Legault."

"I'll do my best to stay alive. Whenever you need me, I'll just be skulking about here."

_You've gotten sentimental, _he silently berated himself. _Not your best course of action._

But that sentimentality bought him another of Isadora's dazzling smiles, and his concerns slipped away like shadows in the sunlight. There was no point in trying to reorder his thoughts with such a beauty with him. He didn't move to drop his arm back to his side, and Isadora didn't move to leave. She may not have needed any man to sort out her life, but if she needed a friend in the absence of her fiancé, Legault supposed he could suffice.


End file.
